Legal aid, kid-size

It’s tough being a kid. Apparently it’s even tougher being a kid in the Central Virginia justice system as trends skew toward treating juvenile offenders more like adult criminals.

Fred Scott creates $2.1M rural fund

Fred Scott, Jr. may have sold his Bundoran farm in southern Albemarle to New Hampshire developers, but that doesn’t mean he’s stopped thinking about farming. And he hopes that a recent $2.1 million donation to create

Wyant credits the tractor factor

After years of committees, plans and stalemates on mountain protection policies, the County Board of Supervisors (www.albemarle.org) finally seems to have come to a consensus on a plan that would extend building restrictions not only to the mountainous areas but across the rural areas asa whole. The decision took a few hours on the tractor. […]

2006 was runner-up

The real estate market in greater Charlottesville once stood astride a lofty peak, but now it’s packed up its trail mix and water bottle to head back down the mountain. Sounds a little ho-hum, right? That’s exactly what Dave Phillips, CEO of the Charlottesville Area Association of Realtors (CAAR) (www.caar.com), predicts for 2007: “Everyone will […]

Planners hope for earlier bedtimes

As anyone can attest who’s attended an entire session, City Planning Commission meetings can be drawn-out affairs. After all the staff comments, applicant comments, public comments, commissioner comments and commissioner comments on the other commissioners’ comments—the hour often creeps past 12am. So in order to cut back on the midnight madness, the Planning Commission recently […]

More cases for the new year

Keeping up with these court cases is an endeavor that never lets you down—there’s always an update, an appeal or a motion. Here’s to folks who make their way in the court system, month after month, year after year. The Ivy Landfill deathIn April 2003, Patricia Stephens’ husband, Wayne, was killed in an accident involving […]

Higher level

Freshman phenom Monica Wright, a starting guard for the UVA women’s basketball team, shoots a fadeaway over a helpless Wake Forest player during the Cav’s 77-70 home victory on January 11.

County planners to glimpse Places29 draft

After a postponed deadline, officials behind Charlottesville and Albemarle County’s massive transit/land-use master plan dubbed “Places29” (www.albemarle.org) say that the process turned out to be just as complex—if not more—than they anticipated. It’s called Places29, after all, not Place29.  Places29 covers a 10-mile stretch of Route 29 between Route 250 and Greene County, encompassing the […]

Legislative help for small wineries

Last July, the landscape changed radically for small Virginia wineries. No, the rolling hills didn’t flatten. Instead, the wineries lost the right to put cases of their own Viognier in their own trucks and drive them down to the local grocery store. Now State Delegate Chris Saxman of Staunton wants to reinstate that right for […]

Little Big Minds

words  At a certain point in my adult life, I decided to give myself a crash course in philosophy. Sure, I’d learned plenty of details in college, but they had gotten lost in the day-to-day drama of making a living. It was time to start over completely. The process went something like this: 1) severe […]